Resource Library

COVID-19 Update: The John T. Gorman Foundation is curating a list of resources, emerging best practices, and innovative ideas from across the country to help local organizations serve vulnerable Mainers during the coronavirus outbreak. To access those resources, visit www.jtgfoundation.org/resources/covid-19 or enter Covid-19 in the keyword search. Those results can be further focused by using the “Filter by” menu above to filter by population type (Young Children, Older Youth, Families, and Seniors) or by clicking the following links: childcare, education, food security, housing, rural areas, and workforce.

The John T. Gorman Foundation strives to be data-driven and results based and seeks to promote information and ideas that advance greater understanding of issues related to our mission and priorities. In our effort to promote these values, we offer these research and best practice resources collected from reputable sources across the country. The library also includes briefs and reports the Foundation has commissioned or supported, a listing of which can be found here.

Nonprofits are increasingly expected to use data and evidence to manage and improve their programs and to demonstrate that they are producing positive results for their clients. Two frameworks for using data and evidence are performance measurement and evaluation. This brief gives nonprofits and funders a basic overview of performance measurement and evaluation to help them assess which activities are beneficial for programs at particular stages of development.

Disconnected young people are the focus of several recent national initiatives to improve their life prospects. Drawing on interviews and available research, this MDRC Working Paper scans the current state of policy and evidence regarding what works in helping young people reconnect to work or school.

Moving the problem of elder abuse up the list of public priorities and engendering a productive public conversation around the issue requires a new communications strategy. An effective reframing strategy can foster better understanding of the issue, raise its salience in public thinking, and generate support for needed policies. This report represents the first step in a larger research project to develop such a strategy.

On July 13, 2015, President Obama hosted the sixth White House Conference on Aging, joining older Americans and their families, caregivers, and advocates at the White House and virtually through hundreds of watch parties across the country.

As the United States' advantage in educational attainment continues to decline, Civic Enterprises and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University joined together to release Closing the College Gap: A Roadmap to Post-secondary Readiness and Attainment. The report analyzes new longitudinal data to link the progress made in raising high school graduation rates to what is known about college readiness, access and persistence; the best indicators of a students’ post-secondary success; and the necessary and complementary roles that both the K-12 and higher education systems must play to raise educational attainments and close opportunity gaps

The Opportunity Index is designed to provide a snapshot of what opportunity looks like at the state and county levels. The Index focuses on the conditions present in different communities and is designed to help local communities connect economic, academic, civic and other factors that support increased opportunity and economic mobility.

The Center for Promise research team traveled across the country to investigate these initial research questions: What do young people say about why they leave high school before graduating? What circumstances surrounded the decision to leave? What were students' lives like when they left school, and what effects did leaving school have on them and their families? Why do young people say they come back to school? What opportunities do young people have to re-engage after leaving school, and what barriers do they encounter along the way?

One in every five children currently lives in poverty, but nearly twice as many experience poverty sometime during childhood. Using 40 years of data, this analysis follows children from birth to age 17, then through their 20s, to examine how childhood poverty and family and neighborhood characteristics relate to achievement in young adulthood, such as completing high school by age 20, enrolling in postsecondary education by age 25, completing a four-year college degree by age 25, and being consistently employed from ages 25 to 30. Parents’ education achievement, residential stability, and neighborhood quality all relate to adult success.